In America

Just had the best porotta beef curry that I have had in a real long time. Nostalgic staple of any keralite - it is the food of the gods.. may be not. Our Oak Park gang had started this trend of making home made porotta driven by the inability to shop easy, thanks to the virus of the day - New Corona. The kitchen work had started at 5 PM and the table was set around 9 PM. There were ample porottas for a stomach filling dinner.  Fresh off the tava and into the tummy with a very brief stop for some memoir photography. 

Corona time. Weekends are about zoom meetings to catch up with old timers. Just finished one with my school buddies - Richu,Pravin,Paul,Rohit,Gopal,Joby,Praveen George,Vinod. Two back to back forty minute zoom sessions. Laughed so much through the meetings that you start feeling guilty. With a slightly aching neck, had chosen to take the call from the bedroom with the wall as the back rest. But the table lamp was not exactly providing the right lighting - all shadow, too much halo. As others were poking fun at me, I started getting a sinking feeling. I could get shredded to bits here. Location change. Sat next to the wifi next. Lights good. But now, the laptop microphone was not working. So had to login on phone as well. Now there were echo issues. "Naalathe kerala..naalathe kerala.." style.  Resolution was to bring the laptop volume to zero, and to keep your hands to yourself when the A/V is good. Rohit had found himself a new sound. Probably listening to him a...

The time of coronavirus will always be remembered by all the people living in this time as a hard, and devestating time. But there is a good part of this pandemic. My parents were doctors, so my sister Cloudy and I were away at our grandparents house in the U.S. We never went outside. We didn’t want our grandparents to be risked too! For now, we’re just playing a few video games and watching youtube.        “Hey Sky! Look at this video!” We were looking for videos that were interesting and informative, but still fun. “It’s about how the earth was suffering until the corona came around! Look!” It was an animated video of the earth and all the planets as human-like creatures and how before the corona, the earth was suffering gravely from the pollution we were giving her. When corona came, so did Quarentine and social distancing. That means less human activity, and less pollution! It also said that Corona was just a warning. “When we stay home, there’...

After our Onam get together last year, it was time for us to regroup, virtually this time as the human species has entered the Corona era.  Six families - Sudheer, Mahesh, Geo, Amal, Anil and Cinish had a fun three hour zoom meeting playing Dumb Charades. Last weekend, we had had a Karaoke session over zoom  with my school friends. Before the game started, we shared our Corona time stories. One of the highlights was Sudheer's collection of one hundred and twenty porottas. Geo shared his adventures of venturing out on the road, actually visiting a beach,  unthinkable if you have bought yourself into the shelter-at-home instructions from the government. Mahesh had purchased ethnic kerala style fishes - kilimeen, mathi etc. At the other extreme, we were shying away from even doing online orders with the intent of getting our pantries emptied out of uninteresting stuff that would just lie there for ever. Meanwhile, the kids who were forced to secondary sit with us ...